Equality matters to Cypriots

Some 177,000 Turkish Cypriots went to the polling booths April 19 to vote to elect a president that would lead the tiny Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in talks with Greek Cypriots, expected to resume next month, to achieve a federal resolution.

At the heart of the presidential campaign was not economic hardship, rampant unemployment or any other domestic problem. Even the decision of the soccer federation to accept becoming an affiliate of the Greek Cypriot-run Cyprus Football Federation - the first such development since the two communities violently parted ways in December 1963, three years after the former British colony became a bi-communal Cyprus Republic - did not become a major issue.

Dr. Sibel Siber, the parliamentary speaker and a candidate of the ruling socialist Republican Turks' Party and Mustafa Ak?nc?, the legendary former mayor of Nicosia's Turkish quarter and a former deputy prime minister, said they approved of the decision of the football federation. Ak?nc? said if after so many decades this problem could not be resolved and Turkish Cypriots were barred from international sports events, then it was the right of Turkish Cypriots to find a way out. Incumbent Dr. Dervi? Ero?lu, however, described the development as "patching up to Greeks" and thus "treacherous," as it undermined the demand for "equal status" for Turkish Cypriots.

The difference in describing what equality indeed is has been one of the fundamental problems between the two peoples. The Turkish Cypriot side - as was enshrined in the failed Annan Plan of 2004 as well - defend that, irrespective of the numeric sizes of the two founding states, there ought to be equality of the two constituent units at an upper house or senate and in federal governance, while...